Friday, May 18, 2018

The “Mezquita”

From Aleteia:
The Cathedral of Our Lady of the Assumption, a Catholic cathedral in Córdoba, a city of 320,000 people in Spain’s Andalusia region, is the largest Catholic church in the country and one of the most fascinating places of worship in the world. Featuring a blend of  Visigoth, Roman, Byzantine and Moorish architecture, this 5.9 acre church stands as a testament to the diverse history of this part of the Iberian peninsula. It is believed that the first building to be erected on its site was a Roman temple dedicated to the god Janus, which was later turned into a rectangular church by the Visigoths—a Germanic tribe who converted to Christianity after seizing Rome—when they invaded Cordoba in 572. In 748–750, the Umayyads, a Muslim dynasty that ruled the Umayyad Caliphate, was overthrown by a rival family, the Abbasids. The last Umayyad ruler, Prince Abd al-Rahman I, fled to Southern Spain and gained control of much of the Iberian peninsula, setting up the kingdom of “Al-Andalus” that would eventually include Portugal, Southern France and the Balearic Islands. (Read more.)
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